A Building Plans card in the project window listing the drawings for this build — assembly drawing, post layout, elevations, wall layout, cross-section, sheathing layout. Closed, the card says how many drawings there are and which SmartBuild job they come from — or No SmartBuild job linked. Each one generates and downloads on its own, so a drawing that fails says so on its own row. The card opens automatically on crew accounts and stays closed for the office. Built exclusively for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the drawings are post layouts, wall layouts and sheathing layouts.
Also called: drawings · plans on site · download the plan · SmartBuild outputs
The drawings live on the job, not in a tool the crew can't log into
Assembly drawing, post layout, elevations, wall layout, cross-section, sheathing layout — generated and downloaded from inside the job. The crew needs the drawing, and it used to live in an estimating tool they had no login for, so plans got texted, printed, or read out over the phone. Sooner or later somebody frames off a revision that was superseded, and that mistake comes back down off the wall.
The crew builds from whatever drawing is in the truck, which may be two revisions old. Reprinting after every change never quite happens, and that is how the wrong opening ends up framed.
The crew lead opens the current drawing on his phone instead of trusting the one in the truck. Drawings that live on the job are the latest revision, so nobody frames off a superseded sheet and tears it back down.
Closed, the card already says whether the plans are there
Building Plans is one card among the project window's cards, and its closed tags answer the first question: 6 drawings · SmartBuild job 41872 — or, in amber, No SmartBuild job linked, which is the office's cue to pair it before the crew arrives.
The crew arrives to a job with no drawings attached, and the office finds out when the phone rings at seven.
The project manager spots a job with no plans linked before the crew turns up to it. The amber tag turns a seven o'clock phone call on Monday into a two-minute fix on Friday.
It opens by itself for the crew and stays folded for the office
For the office it is one card among a dozen. For a crew lead it is the reason he opened the job at all, on a phone, in a truck, at seven in the morning. The card opens automatically on crew accounts and stays closed on everyone else's.
A crew lead scrolls past a dozen office cards on a phone to find the one drawing he came for, gives up and calls.
The crew lead opened the job for the drawing, so it opens for him. He skips the hunt, and the office isn't buried in a card it rarely needs.
One drawing failing doesn't take the whole panel down
Each drawing generates and downloads on its own, and one that fails says Download failed — try again on its own row instead of blanking the card. He knows whether to wait or to phone the office.
One drawing fails, the whole panel goes blank, and the crew assumes there are no plans at all.
The man on site knows straight away which sheet to retry. One failed drawing never hides the other five, so the work doesn't stop for one bad download.
Pairing the job to its design takes a decision, and so does undoing it
The job finds its drawings through the direct pairing where one exists and falls back to matching by name where it doesn't, so drawings turn up on jobs that were paired long before anyone thought about it. Unhooking takes a confirmation and is limited to people allowed to manage plans — a crew lead cannot pull the drawings out from under the next crew.
Somebody unlinks the wrong job by accident and the crew opens plans for a different building.
The office can trust that the drawings on the job are this job's drawings. Only someone allowed to manage plans can unhook them, and only after a confirmation — so a crew lead can't pull the drawings out from under the next crew.
Your own files sit beside it: truss plans, blueprints, permits
Try itThe Plans & documents card takes the files that don't come out of the design — a truss plan, blueprints, engineering, a site plan, the permit — as PDFs, images or CAD files. Each is tagged by kind, and anyone on the account can open them in one tap — the crew sees only the newest version of each, on a phone. Closed, the card shows how many plans there are and the newest ones, with their revision.
The truss plan is an attachment in the office manager's inbox, and the crew needs it on site right now.
The framer needs the truss plan the supplier sent, not just the drawings from the design. One place for both means nobody digs through email on site, and the permit is there when the inspector asks.
A new version never replaces the old one
Try itIn Plans & documents, New version adds the next revision with the reason it changed and keeps the old one, marked Superseded — the crew only ever sees the newest, and a revision can ask the crew lead to say he has seen it. Plan versions and As-Built is the whole story.
A revised truss plan went in over the old file, and the crew's link still had last month's.
The project manager revises a truss plan without wondering which copy the crew has — the field only ever gets the current one. The office keeps every old version for the day someone asks what changed.
At closeout, the final set is marked As-Built
Try itWhen the building is finished, Mark set As-Built flags the current version of every plan on the job as the record of what was actually built — and the homeowner's House Book uses that set as the final plans.
The homeowner asked for the final plans and got the permit set, two revisions old.
The owner hands over drawings that match the building, and the warranty call years later starts from the right truss plan. That is the record a homeowner expects a good builder to keep.
- 1Open the job and find the Building Plans card — its tags already say how many drawings there are.
- 2Pick the drawing you need and download it.
- 3On a crew account the card is already open.
- 4A drawing that fails says so on its own row.
- 5Unhooking the drawings takes a confirmation and a permission.
- 6Files you add yourself — truss plans, blueprints, permits — go in the Plans & documents card.
- 7In Plans & documents, New version keeps the old file marked Superseded, and Mark set As-Built flags the final set at closeout.
The crew on site needs the drawing, and the drawing lived in an estimating tool crews have no logins for — so plans got texted, printed or read out over the phone, and eventually somebody built off a revision that had been superseded. The section opens automatically for crew accounts, because for the office it is one panel among many and for a crew lead it is the reason he opened the job at all.
- Drawings trapped in the estimating tool
- Crews working from stale printouts
